The COVID-19 announcements, being played before connecting phone calls across the network, may stop soon amid the declining fresh Corona infection.

According to a source, the Department of Telecommunications has written to the Union Health Ministry requesting it to drop these pre-call announcements and caller tunes. Some people had approached the department complaining that this pre-announcement caused delays in connecting the calls during emergencies, the source said.

The Department of Telecommunications has said, in its letter, that the message being played across networks results in holding up and delaying critical calls from going through during emergencies and ends in the consumption of precious bandwidth resources.

It also added that this overloads the TSPs network and creates a significant delay in call connection and that it also impacts the customer experience.

The Health Ministry had directed the DoT to issue instructions to telecom operators to play COVID-related caller tunes to spread awareness amongst citizens and tell them about the precautions and vaccination to be taken during the pandemic. The telecom operators have been playing the pre-call announcements on COVID to spread awareness for around the last two years.